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How people spelled when they could spell as they liked

before the 18th century

If peple could spel as they liked, what
sort of caos would result?
What happened when they could?

The time when people actually could spell as they liked was before the late 18th century dictionaries of Johnson and others, and before the directions of 18th century society towards applauding 'conspicuous consumption' and snobbery and the 19th century valuation on elite correctness. These combined to set English spelling in concrete, less than two hundred and fifty years ago.

Some of the answers to how these earlier writers wanted to spell then are interesting, and not quite what we might expect.

This question is relevant to spelling reform now. What were the spelling preferences of writers in those free old days? What linguistic principls did they tend to use?

We are diverted from asking this question about their spelling when we read old writings, because what hits us most are:

a) Vocabulary that has changed or is now obsolete.

b) Changes in English speech, particularly in vowel sounds and in dropped inflexions for word endings.

c) Changes in lettering: old spellings may seem full of antique usages such as Germanic-style 'sharp' ß and ƒ, and double sses, and lots of 'e' and 'y' and absences of 'j' , and the use of 'v' for 'w'.

d) The handwriting can be different - for example, here is some typical 17th century handwriting

The handwriting can be different - for example, here is some typical 17th century handwriting

Here is a study of 'how people spelled when they could spell as they liked', based on long observation in reading in those earlier periods, supported by an analyses of samples of print from around 1370 to 1670. The samples are not of the same length, and they are so short and such a limited sample that the findings can only be indicators to support my background of wider reading. The figures cannot be used for statistical comparisons, but there is a rich supply of material that was printed or handwritten from the late middle ages onward to examine, to back up the generalisations made here.

1. The Anglo-Saxons and perhaps even until Chaucer's time perhaps, writers in English may have 'spelled as they spoke', but after the invention of printing, an interesting thing happened.

Books and pamphlets multiplied phenomenally - everyone who could was reading like mad, and it sometimes seemed that they were all writing too. What happened, according to my observations, could probably be graphed as a diagonal, according to the writers' degrees of education and reading, if someone cared to do confirming research.

The less education and reading that a person had, the more likely that their spelling in their letters and other personal writing would be more closely fonetic, representing their own local speech.

With more education and wide reading, the more likely that the chief determinant of a writers' own spelling would be the spelling in the books and pamflets that they read, even if this spelling did not reflect their own speech - and even if many the commonest spellings they used were already capricious, answering to nobody's way of talking by that time. That is, writers were more likely to be conformers in their writing, tending to write down the vocabulary they used frequently according to habit, and resorting to their own phonetics when they were not sure or were not familiar with any widely accepted usage. Pitman's stenographers used to be like that too - with most of their originally-fonetic squiggles were heavily rote-lernt and then used by unthinking habit, but fonetically encoded when necessary.

One reason for this lack of 'spelling as you speak' could have been the lack of a Received Pronunciation even in Johnson's time, as he complained. There was no prime way of speaking among all the dialects even of London. So it could be wiser, from Aberdeen to Tiverton, to share as common a spelling as they could, in order to communicate. Printers from Caxton on also put in their bit to support more standardised spelling - it suited them better to have some automaticity, when the hot metal had to be placed letter by letter.)

The lesser educated had not such experience in the prevalent spellings. And in their personal letters, all writers were liable to spell with more personal abandon.

These grounds of habit in public spelling in English were setting even in Chaucer's time. Chaucer used many spellings, both regular and irregular, that we still use today - altho he would sometimes vary from them . . The following words and their spellings will be familiar still today: -

"in age was dwelling a dale this of which I my tale day that she last simple for and by of such as God two (a few lines further on, 'tweye') three large sheep sooty many sauce never no morsel passed made never to drank neither served most milk were enclosed land crowing his peer than abbey nature knew degrees ascended amended comb redder coral . ."

The discerning reader can fill in the spaces, since there is sufficient vocabulary to recognise this as the beginning of the Nonne Preestes Tale.

And so, from Scotland to Devon, the educated classes, regardless of their own local vowels, used a wide range of the same common irregular spellings, which they must have picked up from their reading - much as fashions of dress and manners also spread across Europe.

Here are irregular spellings that are still with us, from letters of Thomas Cartwright in 1590 (irregular in the sense of unpredictable)

" many trouble although reason come obedient voice whom who slaughter peace are most conscience words experience knowledge absurd declare prove sword used passionate third ascend have any beauty certain none worth possible people colour occasion weight prophecy measure breath receipt"

2. On the other hand, writers still varied greatly from the inconsistent standards while these were slowly developing. Shakespeare's first folios can be compared, as a case in point.

The data below that I will be using to examine spellings that are different from present spelling come from samples from the following printed books, although backed by my recollections of reading old books and mainly 17th century handwriting.

Consecutive samples have been taken from

Chaucer, (1340-1400)
Thomas Sackville (1536-1608)
Christopher Marlowe (1563-1593)
Letters of Thomas Cartwright, samples around 1590, first edited and published in 1951, so there is no question that the spellings were influenced by the printers of the time - as they could be with the other samples of print - in which case, of course, we are still looking at diverse spelling styles of the time.
Edmund Spenser (1551? -1599)
Scots ballads (dates of writing down are uncertain)
Scots prose 1662 and 1670
Leveller pamphlets - English Civil War 1646-1649 (exerpts from seven pamflets)

Spellings that are different from present spelling are examined in six categories:

1. Morfemic spelling - that is, compound words have been spelled by their word-components, rather than as single words. The old writers had to endure less changing of letters when words were amalgamated. One more thing that spellers today have to learn about.

2. Spellings that are shorter than today. So many antique spellings are longer because of the additional spoken inflexions and fondnesses for doubled consonants - but Surplus-Cut spelling was also alive and well, omitting letters that served no purpose to represent meaning or pronunciation. Exampls of every one of the streamlining principles of Surplus-Cut spelling appear in all eight samples - although there were no Cuts that went against those principles. 'streamlining principles' appear in all eight writings.

3. Many ancient spellings are closer to present speech than their spellings today. Unnecessary complications bother lerners and spellers today - notably extra and unpredictable letters in vowel spellings, 'o' instead of 'u' for the short vowel foneme /u/, 'u' for /w/, simple CVC constructions for final syllables turned into CCV, and 'quite mad' changes to construct spellings like 'choir' and 'tongue'.

4. Following the eighteenth century obsession with genteel manners, we have been taught to be absolutely correct with our spelling, even more than with our morals. The old writers could be cavalier, and in letters particularly (cf Cartwright's) varying spellings of the same word could jostle each other on the same page.

5. It should knock for six that assumption of many spelling reformers that it would be easier for learners and spellers to spell the final sound in plurals and verbs 's' or 'z' according to whether natural articulation made that sound /s/ or /z/. None of these early writers ever did. Not even a woz. However, there was more fonetic discrimination between -d/ and -t/ in participles, less obvious grammar.

6. Across the board, spellings that varied from our spellings today tended to be actually closer to how we pronounce the words, apart from inflexions.

1. Morphemic spelling

2. Shorter spelling

3. Other spellings closer to modern speech than present spellings

None in the Marlowe sample

4. Varying spellings on the same page

- None in the samples from Marlowe and Scots ballads; Scots prose- the only close variation was ' tym/tyme'

5. t- endings to verbs.

None in Chaucer, Spenser, Cartwright or Scots samples

6.s/c/ variations

- None in Marlow, Scots ballads or Leveller samples

7. Obsolete distinctions of medial and final vowels

- only Chaucer - broun doun renoun toun hewed (hued)

8. Other variations from present spelling

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